Supreme Court is the only hope?
Our oligarchs, the big names tumble down!
Media is timid! Black money in untraceable, though 50% of the GDP is in black, says expert researchers and others.
TV channels and no less the print media bring out these corruption-tainted politicians, the corporate bigwigs and sulking other politicians are hoping to survive in spite of this exposure.
In the Supreme Court Ratan Tata pleaded for privacy. Now he lost all privacy! The Court had turned down his plea to hear the 2G Spectrum cases in-camera. The Court said that the massive corruption and the big fish in the net are so much of public interest and the media should be free to comment and expose!
Suddenly, the pretensions of Indians to be holier than holy stand exposed.
DMK-Congress cozy existence has come apart. Sonia Gandhi has bungled and Mr.M.Karunanidhi had shown up for what he is. He is a very ruthless type of a politician in a peace-time democratic polity unsuspected so far in any democracies in the world.
Here is such a smooth operator that he had led the entire Congress party in a blind alley. So, one Raja was enough to bring out the succession of scams and scandals. Mr.Kiran Karnik, the one-time ISRO man and now a well-respected public figure who had to hastily quit the Devas board and he had asked publicly, the Prime Minister to step in and save the good name of the great organisation, ISRO, that had done India proud.
Prime Minister’s credibility
It is also time to call the spade a spade and judge the Prime Minister’s plus and minuses in plain terms.
It is one thing to be a honest man in one’s life. In private life or public life. But it is a different thing to run a country of India’s size and challenges and stand up for what you are as a Prime Minister. India is now seen by the outside world as a great democracy and its many institutions are admired worldwide.
And then you can’t run such a democracy on some excuses.
The PM says it is the compulsions of the coalition politics that tied his hand and he couldn’t do anything about, say, about Raja’s corrupt deals.
Certainly, this is a lame excuse. It is the PM’s duty to call for his minister’s reports and repeatedly if need be before he consults Sonia Gandhi as to what the government has to do to save itself this sort of bad publicity.
And also, the PM must either perform or step down. It is time the very many institutions are subjected to a public scrutiny. Administration, governance is supposed to be the PM’s forte. But unfortunately, he has failed miserably.
It raises some doubt whether he realises the monumental scandals he is presiding over it.
He says ,rather glibly, that he has still “unfished business” and he hasn’t thought of resigning. This is a laughable statement.
This can’t deceive anybody, not certainly the elite and the middle class observers.
This is a rather typical Indian bureaucratic mindset: government service is a god-given dispensation and you survive somehow sticking to the government job. This is the old colonial hangover, this government service, however menial or eminent it can be.
Our democracy is now robust but its political contours are somehow blunted by the way our polity under the current dispensation had evolved ever since Sonia Gandhi took over.
There is an unhealthy relationship between the party and the government.
The PM is seen widely not just a weak person but also not as a free person. But then the remedy lies only within the person who is seen a liability, not an asset. The Cabinet reshuffle recently effected was seen as a joke. No non-performing and corruption-tainted minister was dropped. This is rather an insult to the democratic sentiments of the citizens.
Even now, such non-performers are hanging on. See the way the CBI is going about. Mr.Prashant Bhushan, the counsel for the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, the NGO that is fighting the corruption scams and scandals in the 2G is a rendering such a valuable public service and the Centre must be recommended by the public and the eminent persons outside for awarding a Nobel Prize for fighting for the survival and cleaning up of the world’s largest democracy!
Yes, Indian democracy, now seen widely from outside, from the USA(as testified by the email messages we received on our weblog) as the largest and the most stable and most hopeful for the rest of the world.
The current Middle East unrest and the consequent transformation in the world’s most sensitive region, would be immensely benefitted by what we do in India in safeguarding our democracy and the democratic institutions, our Election Commission is seen as a model for many democracies ,old and new, even in the USA.
So too our Supreme Court which is much more judicious, than even that in UK and USA!
Indians must develop much new confidence in themselves and in their own political institutions. There are still shortcomings. Party leaders don’t get elected in a ethical manner, Congress is an example. Party funds are not audited.
There is much nexus between the very same tainted captains of industry and the party leaders, there is much inequity,450 million people live in poverty and we have 50-60 billionaires rub shoulders with the party leaders. The private planes are put at the disposal of the few political families, their heirs, dynastic politics is shamelessly as a given status quo.
No, this is not status quo. This is degeneration and decline.
The Supreme Court was told how the few really big and influential corporates are not even properly investigated by the CBI and so on.
Such exchanges must be in the public domain. The youth in India are no less agitated about the goings-on in the public life of the country. Russia has oligarchs. So, India too has its own type of oligarchs?
As we write Michail Gorbachev is 8o and he has given us the phrase Russia’s current party apparatus is a bad copy of the Communist party. Is the Congress party a bad copy of the corrupt parties in democracies like in Italy for instance? In Italy, says Clara Fiorini, a history professor from Milan, in Italy too there was coalition politics(very much like that in India now) “Pariocrazia”, the reign of parties was born, for 40 years it went on and in 1992 the great bribery scandal saw a series of short-lived coalitions.
Is India heading for such a trend?
Delhi-based politicians and officials must ponder over seriously!
Image Source : parsikhabar.net